What Happens When Following Your Heart Means Losing Your Mind

Where do you draw the line between love and obsession? To love means to have someone on your mind throughout the day, every day. You feel worry, stress, longing and hope -- sometimes all at once.

People who love so passionately have emotions that run both hot and cold. It's true that there's a line to be drawn between love and passion, but most of us don't see the difference. How can you have one without the other?

Together, love and passion rule our lives. You can find both in music, in art, in technology, in fashion and in food -- in everything. Everything is improved by love and passion.

We’re told that the best way to find love is to follow our hearts. But if love and passion are one and the same, following your heart may very well mean losing your mind. I don't mean that medically; you will simply be a transformed person.

When you're in love, you start living for another someone who means the world to you. You put his or her needs before your own, consider his or her interests and prioritize this person before all else. This mentality, this new way of life -- it changes you.

I lost my mind a long time ago, but I’m thankful for the journey it helped me begin.

You can't find your piece of mind until you've lost it completely.

Love doesn’t end with finding that something or someone. That’s when your journey begins.

Everything that follows -- all the work you put in, all the focus and energy, all the tears that you will inevitably shed -- will make you the person you are meant to become.

Out of all the confusion that comes from losing your mind, you emerge from the process a better individual. You come out of that dark tunnel wiser, smarter and even more passionate than before.

This journey will be lonesome. Don’t expect much support. Your friends and family will hopefully be there for you when you need them, but this experience is ultimately personal.

You’re going to be alone with your thoughts most of the time, and those thoughts are what will both lift you up and throw you into the mud.

If you've really put your heart into the cause, understand that it can break.

You are going to make mistakes. You’re going to screw things up, forget things and lose track of time. You will feel that you did everything right but fail anyway.

Love hurts. You can put your soul, blood and sweat into making things just right, and you're devastated when your plans don't come together. It will break your heart to see the remains of what you had.

But it will also make you stronger -- stronger for the next time you push with everything you’ve got. You may fail again, but success will happen as long as you persist.

You will scar, but you’ll one day look back at those scars with tears of joy in your eyes.

You have to realize life isn't fair.

And if you think life is fair, you will never make it.

Life is far from fair. We compete with other people over just about everything, from the kinds of food we eat to the partners we choose. If it’s worth pursuing, you’re not the only one chasing after it.

You have to shake the notion that you are at the center of the universe. You, with all of your thoughts, feelings and desires, are sharing a world with seven billion other people, each with their own thoughts, feelings and desires.

Certain goals require you to be a little obsessive. To meet them, you need to push yourself harder and further, because the only way of achieving success is by beating the competition.

And if the competition is giving it their all, you better hope that what you’ve got is even better.

You want to get back the love you give.

Most people have hearts with big appetites. We don’t want just the cake. We want the whole bakery.

And following your heart may make you more dedicated than you've ever been before.

The same goes for the love between two people. No one wants to be loved by someone who isn’t devoted in return. Love requires devotion; you and your partner both need to change your lives in order to keep your relationship alive.

This level of devotion will make you a little crazy, but it’s the "good crazy" that fills the pages of every love story.

Follow your heart. Lose your mind.

For More Of His Thoughts And Ramblings, Follow Paul Hudson On Twitter, Facebook, And Instagram.